Advocates, Industry Urge Senate Judiciary to Halt Journalism Bill
The Senate Judiciary Committee shouldn’t advance the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, Public Knowledge said Monday, joining an alliance of advocates and tech groups in an opposition letter to the committee. The Center for Democracy & Technology, Common Cause, the…
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Computer & Communications Industry Association, Consumer Reports, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press Action, the R Street Institute and Re:Create signed. The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to mark up the bill Thursday (see 2208020063). The bill will “cement and stimulate consolidation in the industry and create new barriers to entry for new and innovative models of truly independent, local journalism,” they wrote. “There are other policy solutions to the crisis in local journalism, and we strongly urge you to reconsider” the JCPA. The News/Media Alliance in a white paper released Monday recommended JCPA passage. The association’s report detailed allegations that Google is abusing its dominant position over news publishers. “Google extracts revenue from valuable news content by deliberately and systematically delivering personalized information to users to keep them within their walled gardens,” said General Counsel Danielle Coffey. “This fuels their engine of scraping reader data to sell their information and target them with ads. There remains little bargaining power and, as a result, news publishers are forced to consent to nearly unlimited uses of their content in exchange for scraps.”